The former St. Ambrose School on Adams Street – most recently occupied by a charter school that closed last summer – will not be sold, according to parish leaders, who are instead weighing new tenants for the Fields Corner space.

“Selling it is off the table,” said St. Ambrose pastor Rev. Joseph Linh Nguyen, who told The Reporter that “I’ve expressed that to the Archdiocese, and we’ll do everything we can to keep it as St. Ambrose property.”

He added: “We want to have something that fulfills public needs and activates it and sustains it in the future. The community is growing…I said I would like to put something there that the local community needs. Education is always an option but something to support the community is what we’re hoping for.”

Nguyen said that non-profits in the area have already explored the idea of renting the space, perhaps for a non-profit incubator to support the Vietnamese community. Nothing concrete has materialized yet, but sources indicated that the concept is under consideration.

The 26,000-square-foot building adjacent to St. Ambrose Church became available suddenly last summer when the Davis Leadership Academy closed its doors.

“This was a difficult decision, but one necessitated by the school’s financial condition due to low enrollment, which was no longer sufficient to support the school’s mission and vision,” said Sophia Stephney, the school’s executive director, said at the time, while noting that “the staff and leadership team at Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy has facilitated the transfer of our students to local schools to help ease the stress with the school closing.”

The lease on the building expired on Aug. 31, and the keys were turned back to St. Ambrose on Sept. 1.

Rev. Linh said they plan to be good caretakers of the entire property, including the school, to honor the “people that made so many sacrifices in the past. It’s too late for us to look for potential renters now.”

He said that “for this year I’ll be looking to activate it for parish activities like youth groups and prayer groups. We’ll clean it up and use it for the year and at the same time looking at potential tenants to come in next year.”